How CQU grad is helping flood-proof city

Geoff has been working in regional news since 2010 when he started at the Chinchilla News. He since worked at Ipswich's Queensland Times and the central reporting team NewsRegional. He focuses on data journalim, politics and crime.

BUNDABERG is known for a few reasons. Rum, ginger beer and regular, devastating flooding are just a few.

Central Queensland University engineering graduate and masters of management student Ben Brown wants to help make that last one a thing of the past.

The civil engineer is working on a modernisation of Bundaberg's main street with safety at the forefront.

After Cyclone Oswald left thousands of people unable to get to their homes, Mr Brown knew he wanted to help flood-proof his home town.

"The severity of the rainfall in the upper catchments caught a lot of people off guard. The river rose a lot, and in fact in the building we're in now, the floodwaters were up to the roof. There was a large extent of damage across Bundaberg,” he said.

Mr Brown is one of a dozen regional university graduates and students from across the country featured in the Regional Universities Network's Student Success Story booklet.

"Human safety is a huge part of what we do, really. Civil engineering is broad but essentially it's about making sure people don't get flooded, reducing the risk of people crashing on roads and making sure roads don't fail,” he said.

"Structural engineering, which we did through uni, has the same concerns for human safety. It's about assessing loads and making sure buildings don't fall on top of people and that they serve the purposes they are intended.” -NewsRegional